Fourteen-year-old Moatasem al-Nabeeh suffers from a brain tumor. A new youth soccer team set up in Gaza for young Palestinian cancer patients has given him new hope. “I am happier now, I play and I made new friends,” said al-Nabeeh. “They told us we can play, defy the disease and defeat it,” he added as he hit the pitch for push-ups in his bright yellow and blue uniform. Champions Academy, one of Gaza’s biggest soccer schools, began setting up the team up five ...

Israel will cut around five percent of the tax handovers to the Palestinian Authority over its financial support for jailed Palestinian militants, the Israeli security cabinet said on Sunday, following similar US legislation last year. Under interim peace deals, Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinians, who put the current sums at $222 million a month. With negotiations stalled since 2014, Israel has at times withheld money as a measure of protest or pressure. Palestinian President ...

Nineteen Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were wounded Sunday during clashes in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical sources said.“IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldier injured when an explosive device was thrown during Gaza riots on Israel’s border fence,” the army said on Twitter.It added that Israeli tanks struck “two Hamas military posts in Gaza in response to the explosive device”.In Gaza, the health ministry of the Hamas movement ...

Kuwait’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled al-Jarallah said on Friday that the country will continue to uphold its firm stance against normalizing relations with Israel, according to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA). Referring to a group picture that was taken at the Warsaw conference in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also present, Al-Jarallah said: “Anybody would be mistaken if they imagined that the group picture… signal[s] a change in Kuwait’s firm ...

In an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya English, Prince Turki al-Faisal, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, dismissed the idea of Saudi Arabia cooperating with Israel saying that there’s no change in the Saudi position.Responding to a question regarding the claims that the recent intersection of interests in the Iran file could translate to normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, prince al-Faisal dismissed the notion. “There has been no ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face beams down from election billboards depicting him as a statesman, shaking hands with US President Donald Trump. Opponents portray him as a criminal. Even before he called an election for April 9, he was branded “CRIME MINISTER” in huge banners at protest rallies, a reference to three corruption investigations threatening his decade of political dominance. Love him or loathe him, the election is all about Netanyahu. Although the ...

The US-proposed “deal of the century” on the Middle East peace process is not enough to guarantee a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “The United States proposes or rather deliberately pushes forward new approaches to solving the problem. It has been promising to propose the so-called deal of the century for more than two years,” Lavrov was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Lavrov’s statement came amid a ...

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman assured President Mahmoud Abbas that Riyadh stands by the right of Palestinians to establish their own state with Jerusalem as its capital.King Salman’s statement came on Tuesday after formal talks between him and Abbas in which they discussed the latest developments on Palestine.For his part, the Palestinian president expressed his appreciation to King Salman and for Saudi Arabia’s support for Palestine.From the Saudi side, the talks were attended by ...

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron escorted children to school Sunday, saying protecting them from Israeli settlers was necessary following the withdrawal of international monitors. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last month he would not renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), accusing it of bias. The mission left on January 31. It was established after a massacre of Palestinians in 1994 and Palestinian officials warned ...

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will travel to at least five Arab countries in late February to brief diplomats on the economic portion of a long-awaited US peace proposal for the Middle East and seek their support, officials said on Thursday. Kushner and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, plan stops in Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar on their week-long trip, two senior White House officials said. They may add two other countries to their ...